


Explosive

by RoseAngel



Series: The Red Thread [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Crime Scenes, First Meetings, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 07:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8740621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseAngel/pseuds/RoseAngel
Summary: An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break. - Ancient Chinese belief
A series of alternate ways that John and Sherlock could have met. PROMPT FIC
Prompt #11: How about a case where John is more knowledgeable than Sherlock on key aspects of the case – could be cultural, language, military?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I owe Becca (LlamaWithAPen) a thank you for both beta-ing this chapter and also giving me the idea behind it. I apologise for any mistakes or glaring inaccuracies - unfortunately, John's areas of expertise are not ones I share.
> 
> Today's prompt came from FanFiction.Net user Cyn.2K.

It began, as everything did, with a big bang.

The explosion in question occurred at a small block of flats on the corner of two streets. It was miles away from Scotland Yard, too far to be heard, but news like this travels fast.

Detective Inspector Lestrade had been in his office when the word reached him, courtesy of one of his subordinates. Bombs were not their division – the Detective Inspector was in charge of the homicide department – but this was the kind of thing that could not be kept to one unit. If a bomb went off, then everyone needed to know. They needed all hands on deck until they worked out who was responsible, or at least until they worked out if that bomb was the only one.

Sherlock Holmes had been with Lestrade when the news reached him. The consulting detective had been in the office for the past ten minutes, ranting on about how he needed access to older case files, and that he needed to be informed of any of the more recent cases. When the subordinate came in to give the news, Sherlock cut his sentence off halfway through, and he glanced at Lestrade for only another second or two, before turning on his heels and heading for the door.

"Sherlock!" said Lestrade, getting to his feet.

"It's him, Lestrade!" Sherlock said, before the door fell shut behind him. "It has to be Moriarty."

And with that sentence, Lestrade had no choice but to follow.

Jim Moriarty had become something of an obsession to Sherlock. Moriarty had come into Sherlock's life – into all of their lives, really – a matter of months earlier, in the form of a pink phone delivered to Scotland Yard in an envelope addressed to Sherlock, and a pair of old sport shoes in the middle of a vacant flat. If everyone in the world had an evil counterpart, then Moriarty was the evil Sherlock. Where Sherlock was a consulting detective, solving crimes and putting criminals behind bars, Moriarty was a consulting criminal, helping people get away with the most heinous of crimes, helping criminals flee the country. Both Sherlock and Moriarty were more intelligent than the majority of the world, which was an excellent thing in Sherlock's case, because Scotland Yard could use his help to solve cases and do good, but in the case of Moriarty, it meant that people – many people – could get hurt.

For a matter of weeks, Moriarty had sent Sherlock 'puzzles', drawing his attention to cases that the police had solved years ago, making them realise they had made a mistake, or sometimes sending a clue that led Sherlock to a location where they would find a body, leaving Sherlock to work out what had happened. Each puzzle had a timer on it, a number of hours that Sherlock had to solve it. If he did not solve it before the timer ran out, then somewhere in London, a bomb went off, and someone – many someones – would die.

For those weeks, it felt as though Lestrade didn't have a moment to breathe, and that was nothing compared to the amount of time that Sherlock lost to the puzzles. Lestrade knew he wasn't sleeping or eating, doing the bare minimum needed to keep himself alive while he solved case after case after case. The spaces in between the puzzles weren't time for Sherlock to relax; they just left him antsy, waiting for something to happen, knowing that somewhere, someone was being abducted and strapped to a bomb vest in preparation for the next puzzle.

Then, all of a sudden, it had stopped. No more puzzles, no more threats, no more bombs. The pink phone that Moriarty had used for all communications with Sherlock was taken from Sherlock's flat, taken in the middle of the night on one of those rare moments when Sherlock let himself sleep (and Lestrade knew how much Sherlock had berated himself for it), and in its place was a note that read:

Til next time, darling  
JM xx

And that was that. Moriarty had disappeared without a trace, and ever since, Sherlock had been obsessed.

Sherlock had always had high standards, with cases. He had some sort of ranking system, of how interesting each case was. He had told Lestrade time and time again that he would not take cases that were not _interesting_ enough. After Moriarty, Sherlock's standards became even higher. Not only did cases have to be interesting; they had to have the potential of showing signs of Moriarty's involvement. Sherlock was searching for him in everything he investigated, and he even asked for access to cold case files so that he could search for Moriarty's involvement there. If Sherlock was on a case, and something else came up that he deemed more likely to lead him to Moriarty, Sherlock would drop everything.

He would see signs of Moriarty everywhere, even when Lestrade couldn't see anything. Lestrade had initially thought that that was because Sherlock had always been the more observant of the two of them, and because he had more information on Moriarty than Lestrade had. Now, Lestrade realised that it was because Sherlock was seeing what he wanted to see.

And one of these days, it was going to get him killed.

Lestrade hurried out of his office and to the elevator, hoping to catch Sherlock before he made it to the bottom, but it was to no avail. Sherlock was a whirlwind at the best of times. He had a bad habit of going off on his own – it was another thing on the list of things that would get him killed one day. By the time Lestrade had reached the bottom floor and stepped outside, there was no sign of Sherlock. Never mind the fact that a car would be infinitely more convenient than a cab, especially when the car had sirens on the roof to tell people to move out of the way – apparently, Sherlock believed that his best bet was to go off on his own.

(Lestrade hated nothing more than the fact that, despite the absence of sirens on a cab, Sherlock almost always got there first).

Lestrade climbed into the car, put on the sirens, and veered out into the street.

OoO

Sherlock did get there first, but only just.

Naturally, they weren't the first on scene. By the time they arrived, there was already a perimeter set up around what was once a block of flats. Ambulances were surrounding the remains of the building, paramedics putting the last few of the injured into stretchers to take them where they could be treated.

The block of flats was not a large one, and Lestrade hoped that that meant that there had been few people inside when the bomb went off, but either way, the destruction was tremendous. Lestrade had seen a lot of terrible things in his time as a detective, and for the most part, he had learnt to block it out, because you have no choice but to get used to it if you wanted to do your job. Sights like these, however, were sights that you could never quite get used to. Knowing that this had been a block of flats mere hours earlier, a block of flats that many people would have called home – it made it hard to look at the scene.

Lestrade found Sherlock standing in the middle of it all, turning in circles as though he was trying to take it all in. As Lestrade approached him, he noticed that Sherlock looked almost lost, standing there in the rubble. Sherlock usually did not see crime scenes like this. He saw crime scenes after homicides, with fewer victims, already dead; he did not see scenes of explosions with multiple victims, some on stretchers moaning in pain.

"Sherlock," said Lestrade, coming up behind the man, and his voice seemed to startle Sherlock only for a second before the lost look in his eyes faded, replaced with the calm, collected, and bordering on emotionless expression that Lestrade was much more familiar with.

"Remember the old woman in Glasgow?" Sherlock said, his voice hushed. Lestrade knew immediately who he was talking about. The old woman was one of Moriarty's victims; he had strapped her to an explosives vest and left her in an even bigger block of flats than this. Sherlock had solved the case, cracked the puzzle – she should have been let go. But she'd said something out of line, and Moriarty – or Moriarty's right-hand man – had pulled the trigger. Twelve people had died.

Sherlock had been in Lestrade's office, on the phone to the old woman, when the bomb went off. Lestrade remembered all too clearly the look on Sherlock's face.

Lestrade pushed the thought away. They needed to prioritise, focus on the present. "We don't know that it's him," he reminded Sherlock, looking around at the damage. "If it was Moriarty, wouldn't you have received a phone call first? Wasn't his entire aim to get your attention?"

"He didn't call me before the first explosion," Sherlock pointed out. "The one across the street from my flat. That was to get our attention, before anything else happened."

"He already has your attention, Sherlock. Why would he need to get it again?" When Sherlock didn't respond, Lestrade continued, "You're looking for him. Do you think maybe you're seeing him when he's not there?"

Sherlock didn't respond to that. Lestrade wished that it meant that he was getting through to Sherlock, but he knew better than to believe that anything he said could really change Sherlock's mind.

"There," Sherlock said suddenly, and Lestrade followed his gaze to the man that had caught Sherlock's attention. The only other people on the scene were medics, in uniform – and even then, most of those people had left the scene, now that most of the injured had been found – but this man was not in casual attire. He also looked perfectly unharmed, which made it clear that he could not have been close to the explosion. He should not have been allowed past the perimeter.

Sherlock moved before Lestrade could stop him. He made his way through the rubble, as quickly as he could manage on the uneven ground. He closed the gap between himself and the man, and he grabbed the man by the shoulder, yanking him around to face Sherlock.

"Who are you?" Sherlock demanded. "What are you doing here?"

The man's facial expression went from surprise to anger – at being rather rudely manhandled – but it faded quickly, and he held up his hands. "I'm no one. I'm just here to help."

Sherlock seemed unconvinced. "You're not a medic. How did you get on scene?"

"I was close enough to hear the bombs when they went off," the man says. "I got here before the perimeter was set up. They needed all the help they could get. I'm a doctor."

"What kind of person runs towards the sound of an explosion rather than away from it?"

"You mean, other than you?" the other man said, and then his gaze flickered over to Lestrade as the Detective Inspector got close enough. He saw the man's eyes drop to the badge on Lestrade's belt, and he clearly made the link between Lestrade and Sherlock, taking the hint to not say or do anything stupid. "John Watson. Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. Three years in Afghanistan, a veteran of Kandahar, Helmond, and Bart's Hospital. I've seen worse than this."

Lestrade saw Sherlock's gaze slide down the man's body and back up again, in the way that it did whenever he was deducing someone – like some kind of x-ray machine that could see inside of you, see if you were lying. Apparently, Sherlock did not see any signs of untruthfulness, because the next thing he muttered was, "Ah, yes, of course."

The army doctor – John, as he had introduced himself – looked at the two of them for a moment, before something caught his attention. There was a noise, behind him – Lestrade only recognised after the man had moved that it was a groan of pain. He wouldn't have noticed the sound had the army doctor not drawn his attention to it. Clearly, John had better hearing – or, at least, he was more attentive to sounds like those, sounds of people. Lestrade watched as he moved through the rubble, and after a moment, he had located the source of the noise.

"Over here!" he yelled, raising a hand in the air and waving it around to catch the attention of the medics. After a beat, he looked over his shoulder to where he had left Lestrade and Sherlock, and he yelled, "Come help me get this off of him."

"Come on," Lestrade said, moving past Sherlock to the doctor's side. The man that John had located was almost completely covered by debris, pinned down by something heavy that might have once been a part of a wall. John reached down and hooked his hands under one side, nodding his head towards Lestrade to wordlessly instruct him to grab the other. Lestrade did, and to his surprise, Sherlock was there a moment later. Sherlock had never struck Lestrade as the sort of person to help the injured when there were more important things he could be doing, like analysing the scene. It was a relief to know that Sherlock was not that heartless.

"Here," John said to Sherlock. "Come grab this side, then I can pull him out when you lift it." He shuffled his hands across, and Sherlock, after a second, did as he was instructed, hooking his hands around the structure. "On three," John said when they were ready. "One, two, three."

They lifted, muscles straining against the weight, and once it was high enough, John released it so that he could rush to the man's side. He hooked his arms beneath the man's, and carefully dragged him out from underneath the fallen structure. Lestrade and Sherlock let it fall once he was safely out of the way.

The man that John pulled from the rubble was badly injured – he was burnt and bleeding, and those were just the injuries that were visible to Lestrade on the surface. However, he was breathing, which was something. One of John's hands moved over him, taking his pulse, checking for broken bones and any other severe injuries. With the other hand, he waved to get the attention of the medics. "You're okay," Lestrade could hear him saying, though he wasn't sure if that was because John's brief assessment told him that the man would heal, or if he was just saying that to keep the man calm. "You're going to be okay."

When the medics reached the small group, John stepped out of the way, letting them lift the injured man into the stretcher, and Lestrade turned to Sherlock. The consulting detective had already lost interest in the doctor, apparently having come to the conclusion that he was not behind the explosion and he was not an immediate threat. Already, Sherlock had turned away from the two of them and had crouched on the ground, examining the rubble.

"What are they going to call this one, Lestrade?" he muttered. "Another gas leak?"

Lestrade opened his mouth to respond, but someone else got there first.

"No."

Both Lestrade and Sherlock turned their heads towards the source of the voice – John – and Lestrade saw Sherlock's eyes narrow.

"Say that again," Sherlock said.

"No," the army doctor repeated. "It wasn't a gas leak. It doesn't look like a gas leak."

"How can you tell?"

"The injuries," John explained, glancing over his shoulder towards the paramedics. "Injuries from explosions go into four different categories. Tertiary injures are caused by people flying through the air with the force of the explosion and hitting something. Things like broken bones, bruises – even people losing limbs, with enough force. I can't say for certain, because I haven't examined anyone properly, but for the most part it looks like any of the broken bones and such are caused by something else falling onto the person, not the person flying at something themselves. That, and there's a lot more burn victims."

The army doctor had all of Sherlock's attention now. It was something of a rare sight. Suspects and witnesses got Sherlock's full attention for a few minutes, or seconds, until he decided that he had gathered all the relevant information and had dismissed them as useless. John was not a suspect, and he was not a witness, because he had not given any indication that he had seen the explosion or that he had seen anyone suspicious who could be responsible. He had only seen the aftermath, and the injuries, just as Sherlock had, and neither of them could be sure that John was a reliable source of information.

And yet, Sherlock was listening attentively, apparently taking in the information that he was offering. "What's your point?" Sherlock said.

"High explosive bombs – the kinds that could be mistaken for gas leaks – would involve a lot more tertiary injuries," John said. "They're the ones that detonate, and they cause a huge shock wave – anyone in the vicinity would quite literally be blown away. It would be less localised, too. The windows across the street should be blown in; there should be damage beyond the block of – well, what used to be the block of flats. The amount of burn victims here makes me think that this would have been caused by low explosives. They're simpler – probably homemade." He paused for a moment, looking around, and then he added, "For this amount of structural damage, though, you'd need a lot of them. Placed carefully in areas that could cause the most damage. They'd only have needed to take down the ground floor – if they did that, the rest of the building would crumble, and the force of that alone would do the rest of the damage."

Lestrade glanced at Sherlock out of the corner of his eye, half expecting the consulting detective to tell the doctor how stupid he was, as was the normal way that Sherlock spoke to people. Surprisingly, he did nothing of the sort. Lestrade lowered his tone, and said, "Not his style, is it?" Sherlock would know that he was talking about Moriarty. "His bombs weren't homemade. Made to look like a gas leak."

The doctor looked between them, not quite following their conversation, but then he focussed on Lestrade. "If the bombs were homemade, they were probably made in this building," he said. "It would have been hard for so many of them to be taken in and planted otherwise."

"And you think they would have to have been on the ground floor?" Sherlock said, dragging John's attention back to him and surprising Lestrade even more in his complete willingness to take this stranger's advice.

John nodded his head. "Easiest way to cause damage to a building like this," he said, and Sherlock turned sharply to Lestrade.

"I need a list of the names of anyone who was living in this building," he said. "Especially anyone with a room on the ground floor." When Lestrade didn't move after a second, he said, "Now, Lestrade. Go," and Lestrade knew better than to waste time in situations like these.

OoO

The next few hours were a whirlwind of action.

Lestrade accessed the records, checking the name of everyone who was currently renting one of the flats on the ground floor. He accessed credit card records, looking for any purchases that could have been used in the construction of a homemade bomb. No one immediately caught his attention, but Sherlock saw things a little differently. A man by the name of Evan Marshall caught his eye – the name rang a bell, he said, but he explained that he could not put a face to the name in his head. Still, Lestrade knew that any names that Sherlock had bothered storing in his mind were probably important, given he was pretty sure Sherlock had never bothered to store Lestrade's first name.

Marshall had not made any particularly suspicious purchases over the past several months, but he had withdrawn a significant amount of cash. It was done in infrequent amounts – a couple of hundred pounds here, a couple hundred there – and it would not have caught anyone's attention if they had not made the effort to look into him. Sherlock did a bit of digging, and the rest of the puzzle pieces fell into place.

Marshall's girlfriend, Louise Deverne, had lived in that very block of flats three years ago, and she had been murdered. Marshall had initially been a suspect, which was why Sherlock knew his name, but the murderer, as they later discovered, was actually another man by the name of Caleb Price. Price, as it turned out, had been stalking Louise for at least two months prior to her death. She had not known that Price himself was her stalker, but she had suspected that someone was watching her, following her. She had expressed security concerns to the landlord, who had been known to cut corners: she asked him to repair the broken security camera, and to make sure that the spare key to her room was kept locked away. He had not believed she was in any real danger, and so he had made no effort to spend the money that was needed to increase the security of the block of flats.

That made the motive obvious. Price had been arrested, but Marshall still resented the landlord, holding him responsible for Louise's death. It was more than just the landlord, too, because he would have also blamed Louise's neighbours, who, in his mind, had failed to go to her aid and had failed to protect her. He had moved into the block of flats a few months ago – his name had never been all over the papers, there was no reason why anyone would make the link between him and Louise – and he had set up the bombs.

It was the kind of crime that would destroy the evidence, and it would kill everyone who Marshall blamed. Until they had identified all the bodies, they would have no way of knowing for certain that Marshall was not in the explosion himself. By the time anyone realised what had happened, he would be long gone.

They found him at the airport, waiting to board a plane out of the country. He was prepared: he had a fake name, a fake passport, but he had gotten sentimental. He had used his late girlfriend's last name. They intercepted him before he could board, only just able to arrest him. Had they not known to check the owners of the ground floor flats, had they waited until they had been able to analyse the remaining fragments of the bomb, Marshall would have been long gone.

OoO

Lestrade had been interested in finding contact details for John Watson, so that he could thank him personally for his help on the case. As it turned out, he didn't need to. John had been interested enough in whether or not they had found the bomber that he came by Scotland Yard the next day. Lestrade told him the story.

"We wouldn't have found him in time, if it weren't for you," he concluded, once he had finished explaining that Marshall was in custody. "I wanted to thank you for that."

John shrugged his shoulders dismissively. "You were the one who found him. I just happened to point you in the right direction. I'm glad I could help, though."

"You did more than help," Lestrade began, and then someone outside his office caught his attention. He glanced past John's shoulder, and made a 'come in' motion towards the window. "And, actually, it wasn't me who found him, if we're getting technical. It was Sherlock."

The door to his office opened, and the person who Lestrade had seen outside – Sherlock, of course – stepped inside.

"Sherlock," Lestrade greeted, and he gestured towards the army doctor still standing in front of his desk. "You remember John."

Sherlock's gaze flickered over to the man in question for a second, before returning to Lestrade. "Obviously."

"I was just saying that you might want to thank him for his help on the case yesterday."

"Why would I want to thank him? It's hardly as though he did anything remarkable. He just happened to have some information that pointed us in the right direction."

"Sherlock," Lestrade scolded, and he opened his mouth to continue, to point out to Sherlock exactly how valuable the information that John had offered them had been, but then, to his surprise, Sherlock spoke.

He turned his head to look over to John, and said, "Thank you," with a single nod of his head. Coming from anyone else, it would be the most insincere thanks that had ever been given. From Sherlock, however, any thank you was a shock.

Of course, John didn't know Sherlock like Lestrade knew Sherlock, so he would have no way of knowing that Sherlock's apparently insincere thank you was not quite as insincere as it sounded. He just looked between Lestrade and Sherlock for a moment before finally saying, "You're welcome."

Sherlock immediately turned his attention back to Lestrade. "Donovan's on her way up," he said. "Serious expression on her face. I'd say you have a new case."

"And let me guess," Lestrade said. "You want in, as long as it ranks more than a seven."

"Eight," Sherlock corrected. "I'll wait outside."

He turned on his heels before anyone had the opportunity to say anything more, and he stepped back out the door, letting it fall shut behind him. Lestrade sighed, shaking his head, and then he looked over at the slightly confused expression on John's face. "He's always like that," he said, putting away the files that he had been going through earlier in preparation for Donovan's arrival. After a beat, he continued, "Look, I know he might seem like a bit of an insincere prick – and he is, to be honest – but the way he spoke to you yesterday was unusual. He's not often that polite to people."

"He was polite?" John asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Relative to how he usually is, yes. He didn't insult you to your face, and he actually listened to what you were saying. I don't think I've ever seen him pay that much attention to someone. I'm pretty sure he doesn't hear half the things I'm saying."

"And you still work with him?" John said.

"We need him, quite frankly. And he's a great man. Maybe one day, if we're very lucky, he might even be a good one."

He smiled wryly, and saw John smile a bit too, before the door opened and Sergeant Sally Donovan stuck her head inside.

"Sir," she began, "we've got –"

"A new case, I take it," Lestrade said, and she nodded.

"Double homicide. Doors locked from the inside, no signs of weapons on either of the bodies."

"Well," Lestrade said, glancing at John out of the corner of his eye. "I'm sure that's worth at least an eight."

John smiled a little. "I'll see myself out," he said, and he carefully stepped past Donovan to leave the room. Lestrade grabbed his own belongings and followed suit, following Donovan to the elevator while she listed off the details of the case that they currently knew.

John must have made it to the elevator before them, but when they reached the ground floor, Lestrade was surprised to discover that neither John, nor Sherlock, had left. They were standing by the front doors to the building, Sherlock watching John with an unusual sort of intensity, and Lestrade was able to catch the end of his sentence.

"—injuries, then. Violent deaths."

"Yes," John replied.

"Bit of trouble too, I bet."

"Of course. Enough for a lifetime. Far too much."

There was a moment of silence, Sherlock staring intently at John, before he asked, "Want to see some more?"

John's answer was instant. "Oh, God, yes."

And then they were stepping out the door, together. Lestrade glanced at Donovan out of the corner of his eyes, and when she said nothing, he pretended not to see. Bringing a civilian to a crime scene was not the best idea, but John might be someone who Sherlock Holmes could actually work with. Just this once, Lestrade could turn a blind eye and make an exception. Just this once.


End file.
